1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to techniques for redacting sensitive information from a document. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for allowing a document owner to redact content from a document and allowing a recipient of the document to verify the integrity of the redacted document by challenging the redacted and/or unredacted text regions.
2. Related Art
Identifying sensitive information in a document and redacting this information from the document can be an arduous task. The redaction process becomes even more complicated after the redactions are accomplished, because the document owner then needs to convince the document recipient that the document has been redacted appropriately. The recipient needs to verify that the redacted content is not required information, and that the unredacted content has not been tampered with. This is particularly common in litigation, where the post-production phase typically involves many interactions among the opposing parties and the judge to determine that no information has been inappropriately redacted. Similarly, in the healthcare industry, there is no technology standard in place to support medical record holders who need to prove they have complied correctly with HIPAA and other privacy legislation when redacting records. Unfortunately, the document owner cannot produce the original unredacted document for the recipient to analyze due to privacy issues.